Yes to Everything (44 page)

More recent entries talked about waking up after a long sleep, about sharing what Rex had taught her while she’d had him. She wrote about overcoming the grief and her guilt that he’d given his life to save her. She told them about her martial arts training and going to the gun range; she was committed to helping in her protection, to never be a woman who had to depend on everyone around her for protection. She thanked her fans, her record label, her friends, and her staff for all they’d done to help her heal from losing her man.

Her friends and the twins read her entries religiously, realizing it was an edited diary of sorts. They read between the lines, saw the things she didn’t write. She was still sad but at last they saw determination, the will to fight for the life that had been turned upside down when she lost Rex. All of them agreed the tide was finally turning on her heartbreak.

She had dozens of contests and charity fundraisers going on at any given time, trying to stay busy. She awarded hopeful singers the chance to record a demo with her to submit to record companies, songwriters the chance to win her endorsement with her label, musicians the opportunity to sit in with the band at concerts.

Brooke gave away more money than most people earned in a year to the military, children’s homes, and anti-violence campaigns.

The Bradshaw brothers had been around more since Christmas. She realized they were trying to take things slow, to earn her trust. They touched her more now, holding her hands, touching the small of her back, patting her thigh, and it was making her crazy.

She fought touching them too much, afraid if she started she wouldn’t be able to stop. They showed up more and more, supervising the building of their compound across the road, and dropping in for coffee, lunch, dinner, or just to say hello and chat for a few minutes.

Since her friends had returned to Chicago a week after New Year’s, she was grateful for the company.

One freezing day in early February, she took Buttercup out for her daily ride while the girls were at school. Dressed in her old boots and jeans, a turtleneck and a thick coat, she guided her horse around the yard, warming her up. She was cutting her mare around the hay bales when the bodyguards let Logan and Decklan through the front gates in their huge truck.

They got out and watched her ride, aching for her. Leaning against the front of the truck, they waited for her to drive the stress out, to tire her body so she could continue to function. Her amount of physical activity was exhausting to everyone else who knew her. The brothers understood it well. Brooke used physical activity to ease her tension, fighting her sexual needs and trying to hold out as long as possible.

Seeing them in the main yard, she came alongside the fence. “Hey. Saddle up and come out with me? The girls won’t be home for hours and I couldn’t take my girl out the last couple of days with the ice on the ground.” They nodded and headed for the stable, coming out twenty minutes later.

Mounting up, they rode on either side of her, following her along the cattle roads. They rode in silence for a long time, the brothers loving the chance to be alone with her. “I’ve missed riding. We only ever ride here, Brooke,” Decklan said quietly.

“We used to ride every day before we started performing. Life got away from us, I think,” Logan told him.

Brooke smiled, “That happens sometimes. When your place is done, I’ll give you a couple of my mares. I also have a stallion almost ready for the saddle. He’ll breed true and the mares are good stock.” Clearing her throat, she gathered her courage and said, “I have a song I’d like to add as a bonus track on the new album if you like it.”

Decklan snorted, “We’ll like it. We always like what you write and so do the fans. Is it for Rex?” She nodded. “That will be good for you, Brooke. Sing it for us.”

If both of them were expecting something sad, they were mistaken. The song she’d written for Rex was upbeat and just this side of raunchy. Most of the verses actually made them laugh out loud.

She sang about the life of a tattoo artist, putting tattoos on young people you knew they were going to regret in five years. Tramp stamps on women who’d be grandmothers one day. Names of boyfriends and girlfriends they likely wouldn’t be with inside a month. Piercings on bellies that shouldn’t see the light of day, and on privates you just knew didn’t get any action and was more a ring toss at hope. Throughout, trying to reason with unreasonable people and just shaking your head and giving them what they thought they wanted.

“Damn, woman, that’s going to be a number one. It’s…different than what I thought it would be,” Logan told her.

Brooke laughed and it sounded so good to the brothers who hadn’t heard her laugh nearly enough in so long. “Rex was fun. Honest to god, one of those people who could find humor in anything. I think he’d like it. Deck, I thought we could give it more of a rock feel. He was really only a country fan by association.” Decklan nodded with a smirk. “Logan, you need to sing it. You tear up the songs that make people smile.” He grinned at her. “I’m sure he’s getting real tired of my moping bullshit if he’s watching. I stay busy to keep from annoying him too much. I’ve discovered if I work myself to exhaustion, I think less which is a good thing.”

“We know a lot about that, Brooke. It will get better. You have so many people who care about you.” Decklan didn’t trust himself to look at her.

She was quiet for a long time and when she spoke they both turned to stare at her in shock, “I’m not sure he ever truly believed I chose him over the two of you in his heart. I wonder if he thought of himself as a consolation prize. That keeps me up sometimes, wondering.”

Logan’s voice was barely audible when he said, “No, Brooke. He knew how much you loved him.”

She nodded and there were tears in her eyes, “I did love him with all I had. He also knew I loved you first.” She smiled softly when they sucked air between their teeth, “You didn’t realize it was love, did you? You thought it was a girl’s crush. Rex knew better and loved me anyway. He knew it was possible for me to love more than one person at a time. I already did love more than one person before I met him. He knew a part of me would always love you both and that scared him sometimes. He hated feeling weak and I hate knowing there were times he truly felt like he wasn’t what I really wanted.”

Swallowing hard, she added, “Had he lived, I would have stayed true to him for the rest of my life and been happy with what we had. I would have had no regrets because he was a good man who earned the love I gave him and he gave me everything he had inside himself. There wouldn’t have been one look over my shoulder.”

Silence fell heavily and no one broke it for a long time. “But Rex is gone and here you both are again, with his blessing, no less. That scares me because you don’t have the best track record. To go from a man like Rex, who gave his life to keep me safe, knowing you could break a heart already broken so badly once. I don’t know if it’s a risk I’m willing to take. I don’t think I could survive another broken heart.”

“Brooke, oh god, Brooke,” Decklan whispered with tears in his eyes.

Logan wiped his face, “How can you not hate us, Brooke?”

She shrugged, trying to pull calm around her, “When everything happened, I closed off the part of my heart I’d given you both. You can’t just stop loving someone. If you can, it wasn’t love to begin with. But you can shield yourself from it and protect yourself from seeing things that hurt you. You just go on, I guess. The morning after I met Rex, I knew I’d chosen correctly. You would’ve shredded my heart within a week and my relationship with you would have been destroyed. But I did choose him and he taught me my worth, while you didn’t realize women even had worth at the time. Maybe you know better now, I don’t know. I’d have to put my heart on the line to know for sure. I feel fragile and I hate that.”

Decklan pulled alongside her and stopped her horse, “We won’t hurt you, Brooke. I swear it on my life.”

Logan added, “We know so much more now, Brooke. We’ve worked hard to learn what we didn’t know before. We’ll give you all the time you need.”

“We can wait a long time, Brooke. We’re better now. I won’t lie, some days are hard but we fight through them and we haven’t had a slip in years.” Decklan ran one hand through his hair.

Brooke watched as Evan sat the ATV forty feet from them on the ridge. She gave him a wave and he returned it. “Let’s head back and I’ll make coffee.” They turned their horses and she asked, “Tell me what life was like for you back then. I always wondered. I didn’t understand it.”

Decklan laughed, “You couldn’t have, honey. Not just because you were so innocent but because you have strong moral compass and self control we both envied.”

“We had no self-control, Brooke,” Logan told her hoarsely. “In rehab, they likened it to drugs. We spent all day thinking about our next fix. Women were like crack. We used them up to get the high and walked away. Eight hours later we’d have the need again. They made us go backward to figure out when it started. It was our second tour as a headliner. The third album had blown up and we were mobbed like never before. It was a game at first, could we really just take what we wanted? Would that one really go to the hotel with both of us?”

Decklan kept his eye on the horizon, “A long time ago, we had our own girlfriends, Brooke. One night, Logan’s girlfriend got sick before a rodeo we had tickets for and he went with me and my girlfriend. Halfway through, we both had our hands on her. It was totally subconscious but the way she responded pushed us forward. From then on, we almost always shared women. By our third tour, the questions to the female fans were geared to feeling them out carefully. The fourth, the year before we went out with you, it was blatant. We’d outright ask a woman if she was prepared for both of us and what that meant. For every three who stared at us in shock, there was one who wondered. It became so easy. Far too, fucking easy.”

“The night we left you with Rex, we were insane with need. We were shaking with it. We went to a country bar and found someone willing. God, we knew…we knew it was wrong. Decklan called her by your name three different times, I did twice. We couldn’t wait to get rid of her. The…the look on your face was devastating. I won’t ever forget it.”

“And still…still we propositioned you.” Decklan raked his hand through his hair. “After that, we used the gym, sleeping pills, pot, alcohol…anything we could find that worked to keep us level. We had to get through the tour, finishing it was all we were focused on. Jeanette found us a great place, got us on the right medication to keep us somewhat sane. We admitted ourselves for a month and stayed for two. We hadn’t gone without sex since we were seventeen. It became a challenge, a battle of our wills against the addiction.”

Logan growled, “We pushed ourselves to go another day, then another. We dated someone and didn’t have sex with her. Then someone else and were able to hold off. Just after rehab, we shared a woman who fancied herself in love with us. After all we’d learned, we couldn’t lie to her, couldn’t pretend to have feelings we didn’t. We were gentle with her and for the first time, we weren’t ashamed of how we’d treated someone.”

Clearing his throat, he whispered, “It’s been more than four years, Brooke. Not once through the second tour or the third. Those were our hardest tests since temptation is constant. We had to know we could survive it. Then everything happened and suddenly our problems mattered very little in the landscape of our lives.”

They entered the main yard and Brooke came to a stop but didn’t dismount as she stared at them. “You…you haven’t been with anyone in four years?” They shook their heads. “But…why? I don’t understand. You obviously have the addiction under control. Why are you punishing yourselves?”

“Because we hurt you, Brooke. Trampled on you and everything you should have meant to us.” Decklan met her eyes levelly. “It was penance. We earned it and we serve it.”

Logan’s gaze held hers, “Then you lost Rex and your safety, your healing was more important than anything to us. We decided if we were honestly repentant, if we truly felt we could treat you better if we ever had another chance then we could keep going. So we did. If it isn’t you, it won’t be anyone, Brooke. That’s where we stand.”

“You said not to apply again until we had the qualifications to be the men you needed, Brooke. Logan and I have worked to become men worthy of you. We’ve tried to shed our selfishness, our immaturity, our lack of self-respect, and lack of respect for women. Even though we never thought we’d get another chance, we wanted you to be proud of us anyway.”

Brooke slid gracefully to the ground and stared at them. “Come down, please.” They dismounted and followed her into the stables leading their horses. “I need a minute to think.” She busied herself with getting the horses taken care of and led them into the house.

After she hung up her jacket and hat, she started coffee while they did the same. Turning to look at them standing in her kitchen, she rested her palms on the counter behind her. When she said nothing, they moved to stand in front of her, shoulder to shoulder, their eyes on her face.

“I don’t know when I’ll be ready emotionally, do you understand?” They nodded slowly. “I don’t know if I can ever trust you. Are you prepared for that?” They nodded again. “Why?”

Together, they said softly, “Because we love you, Brooke.” Her breath caught and her chest tightened. Logan said with a smile, “You didn’t realize it was love, did you? We can tell by the look on your face. You thought it was lust.”

She gave them a half smile. “It started with lust though. You have to admit that.”

They laughed and Decklan winked, “Yeah but we’re all grown up now. We know women actually look for both.”

Brooke’s eyes went warmer, darker. “No. Not always.” Both of them moved slightly toward her on instinct and her chin came up making them stop. With a strong voice, she said, “I’m not the girl I was. I think you’ll find its better I’m not.”

She pushed away from the counter and walked around them, sensing their tension. “The girl I was would have allowed you to control me, to call all the shots. I would have been so giddy to have your attention.” She paused in front of them for a moment. “Cute enough but it never would have held your attention for more than a couple of days.” She circled them again. “That girl would have been left bleeding out emotionally.”